Not what you want to see

[tfischer]

To drive my point home, who actually thought a couple of 2x4's would do any good. That's like building a deck on toothpicks.

Glad I have a company car.

To be fair, we don't know what the issue is here. I seriously doubt anyone thinks that's holding up the entire next level of the parking deck - we're not THAT stupid up here lol. My guess is some of the undersurface of the upper deck is spalling, and the boards are there to hold it up until a major repair can be coordinated.

[capncarl]

The 2x4 is likely holding up a piece of spalled concrete that looks suspect. My concrete project I mentioned had salt and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) pouring on the floor above and finding its way into the rebar via hairline cracks. We started off using 2x4s just like this to stop the pieces that were dinner plate size but when they got to be the size of a truck hood and 3" thick it finally got managements attention. Most concrete structure repair for damage like this usually involves scaling off the bad concrete, cleaning and coating the rebar and replacing some rebar then form and pump the concrete back or spray it on. My experience says this is just a band aid because the rest of the structure has been exposed to corrosives as well and will suffer the same fate. It's repair is a nasty hard job but somebody has a to do it.
capncarl